H. L. Mencken

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops

This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.

The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fear. It is piped into central factories, and there it is flavoured and colored and put into cans.

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

The worshiper is the father of the gods.

Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence.

There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.